Fic: Lockbox
Fandom:Supernatural
Pairing: Gen: Dean, Sam
Summary: Nurse Glockner got Deacon before Deacon got them out. So they stay in.
Rating: PG-13 - violence, cursing, bitching, a little bit of weeping.
Spoilers: up to 219: Folsom Prison Blues
Notes: This is an apology to opprobrium for making fun of her favourite story, ever. Obvs, I am a huge bitch and only 3800 words written after I faked sick at work so I could leave at 12:30 to come home and write it in 6 hours straight will ever make up for it. LETS BE FRIENDS AGAIN, OK? I can't wait for your ep-related icons.
It took fourteen months for them to get out, after Deacon died. Because never mind that Dean couldn't have touched Lucas in solitary, or that Tiny died two cells over in the infirmary. And never mind that the injuries - now called blunt trauma and suspect injection of toxic substance in the reports - could never have been caused by any human hand. Deacon had died right in front of them: Sam had even shouted for help after they'd thrown the last of the salt and Nurse Glockner came back at them, hissing out Deacon's past crimes and seizing him in her talons. The guards didn't see her, but they saw Dean struggling with something, and when they'd finally manhandled him up and off Deacon's body, it was clear where the blame would be pinned.
Sam reiterated the various impossibilities of Dean's murdering Deacon to the public defender eight times over, in his most eloquent pidgin-legalese, and got nothing for his troubles but raised hands and a flat response: “if they never find the needle, I guess that makes you boys innocent.” She was sick of lost cause cases, and her husband was haranguing her to go back to practising family law. She couldn't remember why she'd ever started with this vigilante lawyer crap, though Dean's sudden, sympathetic interest in her personal life validated her even as it set off warning bells.
Dean would report back to Sam on her emotional state with nonchalance, even though he was pretty pissed that all his charm, all his calculation was getting nothing useful from her end. Sam would think about their case in the most logical, academic way he could. He'd ponder old professors and mostly-forgotten textbooks and realize, alright, no way was he ever going to actually be a lawyer now. Both of them knew they didn't have much going for them. Especially after P.D. Mara started crying on the phone one day three months in and told Dean she was going to get a divorce, and he was the only one who understood. He coughed away from the phone, knit his brow, and told her he felt the same way. And how about she busted him and Sam out so they could be together? Like they were meant to be. He said, “How do you feel about Louisiana?” and she hung up.
On the downside, now Arkansas and the county had some charges pinned on them, there was no chance they'd be extradited to Missouri or Wisconsin, maybe get a chance to punch a hole through the paddywagon on the interstate, or seduce a guard by popping Sammy's top button open.
On the upside, now Henriksen was pushed to the bottom rung, and a pack of senior-level local boys were heading up the investigation and prosecution. Watching him chafe, like his competence was a diaper and his zealousness the cold damp piss in it, pretty much made life worth living.
But the downsides kept coming. Like how Nurse Glockner wasn't stopping - although her killings had slowed down since the government had shut down renovations in the old cell block for various bureaucratic reasons. Mostly she wanted Dean, which was why the next inmate to die was his partner for kitchen duty, and the one after that was his cell mate. She managed to do it while he was helpless to stop it (in the meat keeper with the door jammed closed, in the shower where Dean's salt would've dissolved anyway) but still close enough to blame. She hissed, Killer, criminal at him once, and he wondered how in the hell both the FBI and a self-righteous spirit could get it so backwards. You'd think one, if not the other, would have some clue. Although she was right about one thing, he would kill her as quick and soon as he could, once the chance came.
But it didn't, not for months. And he'd hear Sam across the hall screaming himself awake at night, then getting knocked around by his neck-tattoo bunkmate, Cesar. Because the bars might keep them in here, but it didn't keep the visions out. Sam watched people die probably once or twice a week, and in the mornings Dean would be so determined, so fucking ready to get them out and show Sam that they could still help people, that they weren't the monsters their reputations had created.
But he couldn't get them out. Their new lawyer was a prick in a red necktie too tight for his swollen froggy throat, and Dean dismissed him before he'd said a dozen words. The guards weren't as stupid as you'd hope, here in the medium-security detention center. And a fifteen-foot chain link fence was still a fence. Did he think they'd get shot climbing over it in the middle of the rec hour? Not really. But he knew they wouldn't get far afterwards, running through the corn fields towards Little Rock and the Impala. And there was no digging holes through the stone with cafeteria spoons. There was no disappearing during the chaos of lunch or dinner time. There was no bribing guards or picking locks. There was waiting, and thinking, and trying to avoid the fights without seeming to try to avoid them. And there was trying to kill Glockner, even though her bones were thirty good miles away and table salt didn't have quite the same effect as rock-salt shells.
One morning, half a year in, Dean sat with Sam in the mess hall, and listened to him describe a lady with grey hair and her aging father, the stick-figure brand on the handful of sick cattle he saw her driving, the hints at maybe Laramie, or farther north. Electrical storms and a wind rising so dirty and thick it choked her and her cattle to death, piled on top of one another in a ditch along the gravel road. Dean said, “Sounds like a demon to me,” and Sam looked at him, expressionless in the way that signified deep anger choked into silence.
Sam had stopped being indignant and prissy a few months ago, stopped squawking things like “Where are you going?” and “What's that supposed to mean?” across the hall, because he finally noticed the stares he'd get for it. He pretty much counted as Dean's wife, and the guys in here liked to fight over property, the various punishments and consequences just another way of marking the time. So instead he'd changed the way they talked to a low, bored murmur. Barely looking at each other. Except like right now, when Dean said something so monumentally stupid that they both might as well have given up on the conversation, spared themselves the bickering and piqued feelings. Of course, they kept going.
“What would you like to do about it, Dean? Paint up a devil's trap in her barn, a nice lockbox for whatever's gonna kill her? How bout we pick up the Impala and drive over there tomorrow?”
“Maybe not tomorrow,” Dean's eyes drifted away across the mess hall, “I got a haircut at ten.”
Sam pushed back in his chair, arms folded, fingers waving sardonically: “Well how about next month? Maybe August? Maybe next year or ten years from now - except, oh wait - I forgot, we're going to be in here till they fry us.”
Dean lifted an eyebrow, still without looking at him. “They won't fry us. Glockner will get me first, and you'll either die of that ulcer, or Cesar will insert some hemorrhoids for you. Does Arkansas even have the death penalty?”
Sam hissed out a wife-ish sigh and stood up. “No, man, neither of those things are going to happen because I'm going to go fucking dark side before then. And it's not gonna have anything to do with any demon.” He left, presumably to go sulk in his top bunk while Cesar was out roaming the yard.
Dean knew he was wrong, though. He was used to Sam's moodiness, the long days of silence followed by sudden bright bursts of inquisitive, helpful attempts to talk about feelings. The way his brother used verbal communication like a blunt weapon, withholding emotions to punish and talking to set things right, even though Dean - like their Dad before him - had made it clear that silence was blessed, and his yammering unwelcome, unless pointedly relevant. But recently, the patterns had fallen apart. Sam's words had fallen into strict sarcasm, unmollifying, resentful. Seven months of parading dead people could do that to you. Sam was losing it, a bit.
And Dean knew he was responsible, watching his brother teeter on the brink like that. It had everything to do with the demon, and it had everything to do with their being so efficiently, effectively neutered. Dean had already painted up a lockbox on the ceiling, and it was named Ego and Bad Luck.
On a Sunday morning two weeks later a guard came by when he was raking in smokes at a picnic table to tell him he had a visitor. Henricksen sat across the glass, all stiff white collar and aggravated eyebrows. He looked like shit. He stared at Dean for a long time before deigning to pick up the phone. Dean himself smirked, and mirrored the action.
“How the hell'd you do it, you cocky son of a bitch?” He looked like he hadn't slept since St. Louis.
Dean's own eyebrows rose. “Do what, Special Agent? Your wife, or your mother?”
“Shut it. You either tell me right now how you killed the poor suckers, all five of them, plus the three that happened before you showed up, without laying a finger on 'em, or I tell you exactly what I think.”
Dean shook his head, raised his hand in supplication. “Enlighten me.”
“I think you are one unlucky bastard. Barring God's own divine wrath, you are a walking carrier of massive heart failure. Barring that, you are innocent.”
“Ha.” Dean leaned back in his chair, by all appearances delighted and flattered. “You really think so?”
“You know what those State bitches are saying to each other right now?”
“What?”
“Asbestos. That's why they called off the renovations. They're saying that's what these people - all your little friends - died of. Motherfucking asbestos. They're calling in a professor from U of Texas to do some tests.” He spit out the last word like you might an insect crunched up in your salad.
Dean laughed, came forward to rest his forehead on his fingers, still laughing. “God almighty,” he sighed.
“So I know - I know - Winchester, because I'm not an idiot, that you and your baby brother are clean. And because you're clean on this you know what's going to happen? My case - my many, well-handled, perfectly legitimate cases - are going to get tossed to the ass end of things because everyone will be so embarrassed about accusing you boys of murder by asbestos.”
“That's really unfortunate, Victor,” said Dean, “My condolences.”
“It's unfortunate for you, boy, because you'll be the one rotting in C Block till your brother grows titties, while various charges get passed around and tax dollars get ate up by legal fees and you drain the system with your hearty Kansas appetites and inevitable STDs.”
Dean cleared his throat, angled a look at the other man. “What the fuck is your point, Henricksen?”
“My point, Winchester, is that I am getting you extradited to Missouri, and it would really help my case if you could make yourself dangerous for a little while. Beat up some thugs. Mouth off to a few guards. Hang out in solitary for a while.” Henricksen's empty hand folded and unfolded against the dirty countertop, picked at itself like a dog licking its crotch. The man was rattled. Still, he asked like it was a perfectly reasonable request.
“Uh, fuck yourself,” said Dean, and stood up.
The look of absolute panic on Henricksen's face stopped him - the other man lunging forward like he could grab Dean by his jumpsuit through the window and hold on for mercy and life. Surprised, Dean sat down again. Considered his words. “I'm not going to help you nail my brother and me. Obviously. So what are you actually asking for?”
“Things are getting grey,” said Henricksen, half to himself. His eyes flicked up again, and there was sweat on his face. “I need to clear them up, the law doesn't operate in shades of grey, or at least not the kind of law I do.”
“If you know these murder charges are bullshit, why are you still hanging on to St. Louis? You know as well as I do-”
“No, I don't know that.” Henricksen cut him off, sharp. “What I do know is this: I will get you out of this hell hole, and what happens after that, happens.”
Dean snorted. Looked at the man carefully. The white collar was clean, but the suit jacket was shiny with ironing, while the tie had wrinkles and even a few crumbs. Where was the cocky facial hair? Gone, just a shadow of a beard left. This man looked near as obsessed as a Winchester. He'd let them go free just to hunt them down again. He'd probably watch them rough up a guard and steal his cash and ID, just so he could nail them for cop-killing and identity theft later down the line. Or maybe not. Dean didn't know. But he wasn't in a position to question.
“I'll see you in St. Louis,” Dean stood, and left.
He didn't tell Sam, couldn't give him that hope just to take it away again. Couldn't bear to hear the harangue against trusting a neurotic bureaucrat like Henricksen. Thought Sam and Victor would probably have got along, if Jess hadn't burned up on the ceiling and the Stanford interview had gone smoothly.
He didn't have to mouth off to a guard, though, because Sam finally made good on his threats and went dark side on Cesar one night while screaming the name of a soon-to-be dead man in Richmond, Virginia. “Curtis Butler. Curtis Butler. CURTIS BUTLER. CURTIS BUTLER CURTIS BUTLER.” Cesar went to the infirmary, Sam went to solitary for a week. When he came back, he was quiet, and his eyes dipped and didn't rise. He apologized. Cesar didn't come back, even after he recovered, and Sam slept alone, and woke screaming other names. Neighbours on the block muttered complaints, but didn't say anything.
Dean kept dreaming that Sam's eyes were black, but they never were. Once he even muttered a blessing over the powdered OJ, watched Sam drink it down, and felt sick to his stomach.
He waited two months, then tracked down Henricksen's number, asked how it was going. Henricksen said, “What? Who is this? Who the fuck is calling?” and hung up.
Dean was resolved, though, and he picked a fight with one of Lucas' old buddies, spent a few nights in solitary himself. Nurse Glockner didn't visit. He wondered if the construction had somehow trapped her again, back in the old block. He didn't know. But an idea suggested itself to him.
When he got out, Sam had scabs down the sides of his face from tearing at himself during the night. He started to sob in the yard, where it was sunny and the concrete reflected warmth up at them. Dean, who hadn't touched anyone except to punch them in almost a year - and longer, really, because he could barely remember the last girl - hesitated, then sat Sammy down on a picnic table's bench, and sat on the tabletop as lookout himself. He put his hand in Sammy's hair and let the boy curve his face against his thigh, and glared out at anyone who even dared to glance sideways at them. Wife, my ass, Dean's look said. He's my damn brother.
What could he do? Henricksen was probably bust and his brother was losing his mind and soon they'd be arguing that same damn thing: there was nothing he hated more than Sam begging for that promise. He'd given it, he hadn't meant it, he'd never mean it. He didn't want to discuss it. There was one thing they could do something about, and even that was a maybe.
They pulled the same stunt as last time, except Sam let someone else get punished for the fight, which was easy enough once you understood the way the guards looked at things. Dean crawled through the vents and made it to the old block and looked at the empty isolation cells, and didn't feel her presence at all. He prowled from room to room, looking them through and shutting the heavy iron doors. Just blank rooms: no windows, no bars, no slots. Iron had some mystical properties, he knew - nothing like salt or silver, but ancient all the same. They used it to kill nymphs, the odd wood fairy turned feral.
He entered one room, salt at the ready, and she was there, in the corner, head bleeding and gluey eye staring at him. She hissed, stuttered forward until she was standing in front, in front, behind him. Dean whirled, the door clanged shut, and in the sudden, breathless black he heard Sam shouting through the door as her fingers seized into his chest and he felt his heart start shuddering, tearing itself apart.
He tossed the salt at her, and she flickered for a brief second, long enough for Sam to push open the door, grab Dean by the forearm, and pull them both out. He slammed the door shut, back against it, hoping. Dean gave him a look of annoyance, rubbing his arm sourly.
“What.” Sam said, “You wanted to be trapped in there with her for forever?”
“At least she'd be in there,” Dean said.
“At least you're a dumbass,” mocked Sam.
The door was silent. Dean bent to pour the salt shaker across the threshold, using up three of the five he'd brought in the process. “Just in case,” he said.
Sam looked up and down the empty corridor. He was grinning, looking a bit like himself despite the pastiness and slack frame. “You know. While we're here.” He gestured at the ancient, barred window at the end of the hall, and Dean picked up an abandoned length of rebar from the floor to use as a lever.
They didn't make it all the way out before they got caught. They were halfway up the fence, Dean having already thrown up his jacket to cover the razor wire. But like he'd predicted, the guards spent a good time yelling before they let out a warning shot. It was hard. Dean reminded himself of Henricksen, tried to think Hey, this is all part of the plan. So first he, and then Sam, who didn't understand at all, dropped back to the ground, to get manhandled and handcuffed and thoroughly chastised by the over-excited guards.
After that, Sam's visions got worse, coming in the daytime again, making him act half like a little boy, half like a psychopath. It got so they could probably have walked around holding each other's crotches and necking, and none of the thugs would've said anything. And it was Sam who was a hell of a lot scarier than Dean.
As it was, they mostly just kept to themselves. Sam, who refused to get into any more fights after their long, long stay in solitary, got a job in the library for 35 cents an hour. He trolleyed around books and magazines when everyone else was confined to their cells, and Dean would ask for porn every time he came by. Every time he came by, Sam would offer up War and Peace.
“It's really good.” He'd say, and from the brevity of the description, Dean kind of suspected that he hadn't read it himself.
“Dude, at least something in English, alright?”
“Dude, at least try to educate yourself.”
“Dude, I'd rather whack it to Cesar than think about dead Russian princesses.”
“It's not about-” Sam started to protest, and then his voice kind of cut out, and he looked down at his book stack. “Does Buddy want anything?”
“Porn?” said Buddy, from the top bunk.
The next day, Sam lost it on the kitchen staff and scalded a man's thighs and bits with boiling water, and then knocked three more out in quick succession over a tussle about the meat sauce. When the guards came he got a baton out of one's hands and broke the man's face, then he had the shit kicked out of him by the rest of them. Again, Dean thought he saw bottomless black, but there was no way to test it, because Sam was in the infirmary for five weeks. And it wasn't a possession anyway, they both knew it, it was something much deeper, much worse.
The next time they saw each other was in the paddywagon Henricksen had arranged for. Dean looked at his brother as he got folded and locked into the bench opposite him, and pretty much started to cry, except for the fact that he was too fucking nervous to do something so useless. Sam didn't have bruises so much as stained scars in the hollows of his face, and he moved like he'd been playing tag with werewolves for the past week. Mostly he looked like he was missing a hunk of himself.
Dean smiled weakly. Sam did the same. Dean already had his handcuffs' lock cracked open as the van merged up onto the interstate. He reached down for his ankle shackles, but paused, and reached over and touched Sam's bound hands instead, then took them in his own. It was safe to do so, he knew it, Sam could barely even pull away, much less go berserk.
“Hey,” Dean told him, “We got options, now.”
“Yeah? What're those?” said Sam, he cocked his eyebrows at him. “Go crazy in prison, kill criminals; go crazy outside, kill innocent people. ”
“Drive your brother crazy; get killed yourself.” It wasn't a good joke, Dean felt the weight of his promise fall down on him like so many tons of iron. He took off Sam's handcuffs, they both turned to their shackles.
“Alright,” said Dean, straightening. “First things first: start screaming. I know you're good at it. Scream at those bastards up there until they come back here and let us out like the dumbasses they are.”
Sam did, and the guards pulled over and came back, one with a baton, the other with a sidearm, and the Winchester boys locked them both up in their skivvies, draped them in orange. Then they took up position in the cab, Dean re-starting the engine and adjusting his new uniform at the same time, and pulled back onto the highway in a peal of dry, rising dirt. Fourteen months to the day after Deacon died, they were back on the road.
Pairing: Gen: Dean, Sam
Summary: Nurse Glockner got Deacon before Deacon got them out. So they stay in.
Rating: PG-13 - violence, cursing, bitching, a little bit of weeping.
Spoilers: up to 219: Folsom Prison Blues
Notes: This is an apology to opprobrium for making fun of her favourite story, ever. Obvs, I am a huge bitch and only 3800 words written after I faked sick at work so I could leave at 12:30 to come home and write it in 6 hours straight will ever make up for it. LETS BE FRIENDS AGAIN, OK? I can't wait for your ep-related icons.
It took fourteen months for them to get out, after Deacon died. Because never mind that Dean couldn't have touched Lucas in solitary, or that Tiny died two cells over in the infirmary. And never mind that the injuries - now called blunt trauma and suspect injection of toxic substance in the reports - could never have been caused by any human hand. Deacon had died right in front of them: Sam had even shouted for help after they'd thrown the last of the salt and Nurse Glockner came back at them, hissing out Deacon's past crimes and seizing him in her talons. The guards didn't see her, but they saw Dean struggling with something, and when they'd finally manhandled him up and off Deacon's body, it was clear where the blame would be pinned.
Sam reiterated the various impossibilities of Dean's murdering Deacon to the public defender eight times over, in his most eloquent pidgin-legalese, and got nothing for his troubles but raised hands and a flat response: “if they never find the needle, I guess that makes you boys innocent.” She was sick of lost cause cases, and her husband was haranguing her to go back to practising family law. She couldn't remember why she'd ever started with this vigilante lawyer crap, though Dean's sudden, sympathetic interest in her personal life validated her even as it set off warning bells.
Dean would report back to Sam on her emotional state with nonchalance, even though he was pretty pissed that all his charm, all his calculation was getting nothing useful from her end. Sam would think about their case in the most logical, academic way he could. He'd ponder old professors and mostly-forgotten textbooks and realize, alright, no way was he ever going to actually be a lawyer now. Both of them knew they didn't have much going for them. Especially after P.D. Mara started crying on the phone one day three months in and told Dean she was going to get a divorce, and he was the only one who understood. He coughed away from the phone, knit his brow, and told her he felt the same way. And how about she busted him and Sam out so they could be together? Like they were meant to be. He said, “How do you feel about Louisiana?” and she hung up.
On the downside, now Arkansas and the county had some charges pinned on them, there was no chance they'd be extradited to Missouri or Wisconsin, maybe get a chance to punch a hole through the paddywagon on the interstate, or seduce a guard by popping Sammy's top button open.
On the upside, now Henriksen was pushed to the bottom rung, and a pack of senior-level local boys were heading up the investigation and prosecution. Watching him chafe, like his competence was a diaper and his zealousness the cold damp piss in it, pretty much made life worth living.
But the downsides kept coming. Like how Nurse Glockner wasn't stopping - although her killings had slowed down since the government had shut down renovations in the old cell block for various bureaucratic reasons. Mostly she wanted Dean, which was why the next inmate to die was his partner for kitchen duty, and the one after that was his cell mate. She managed to do it while he was helpless to stop it (in the meat keeper with the door jammed closed, in the shower where Dean's salt would've dissolved anyway) but still close enough to blame. She hissed, Killer, criminal at him once, and he wondered how in the hell both the FBI and a self-righteous spirit could get it so backwards. You'd think one, if not the other, would have some clue. Although she was right about one thing, he would kill her as quick and soon as he could, once the chance came.
But it didn't, not for months. And he'd hear Sam across the hall screaming himself awake at night, then getting knocked around by his neck-tattoo bunkmate, Cesar. Because the bars might keep them in here, but it didn't keep the visions out. Sam watched people die probably once or twice a week, and in the mornings Dean would be so determined, so fucking ready to get them out and show Sam that they could still help people, that they weren't the monsters their reputations had created.
But he couldn't get them out. Their new lawyer was a prick in a red necktie too tight for his swollen froggy throat, and Dean dismissed him before he'd said a dozen words. The guards weren't as stupid as you'd hope, here in the medium-security detention center. And a fifteen-foot chain link fence was still a fence. Did he think they'd get shot climbing over it in the middle of the rec hour? Not really. But he knew they wouldn't get far afterwards, running through the corn fields towards Little Rock and the Impala. And there was no digging holes through the stone with cafeteria spoons. There was no disappearing during the chaos of lunch or dinner time. There was no bribing guards or picking locks. There was waiting, and thinking, and trying to avoid the fights without seeming to try to avoid them. And there was trying to kill Glockner, even though her bones were thirty good miles away and table salt didn't have quite the same effect as rock-salt shells.
One morning, half a year in, Dean sat with Sam in the mess hall, and listened to him describe a lady with grey hair and her aging father, the stick-figure brand on the handful of sick cattle he saw her driving, the hints at maybe Laramie, or farther north. Electrical storms and a wind rising so dirty and thick it choked her and her cattle to death, piled on top of one another in a ditch along the gravel road. Dean said, “Sounds like a demon to me,” and Sam looked at him, expressionless in the way that signified deep anger choked into silence.
Sam had stopped being indignant and prissy a few months ago, stopped squawking things like “Where are you going?” and “What's that supposed to mean?” across the hall, because he finally noticed the stares he'd get for it. He pretty much counted as Dean's wife, and the guys in here liked to fight over property, the various punishments and consequences just another way of marking the time. So instead he'd changed the way they talked to a low, bored murmur. Barely looking at each other. Except like right now, when Dean said something so monumentally stupid that they both might as well have given up on the conversation, spared themselves the bickering and piqued feelings. Of course, they kept going.
“What would you like to do about it, Dean? Paint up a devil's trap in her barn, a nice lockbox for whatever's gonna kill her? How bout we pick up the Impala and drive over there tomorrow?”
“Maybe not tomorrow,” Dean's eyes drifted away across the mess hall, “I got a haircut at ten.”
Sam pushed back in his chair, arms folded, fingers waving sardonically: “Well how about next month? Maybe August? Maybe next year or ten years from now - except, oh wait - I forgot, we're going to be in here till they fry us.”
Dean lifted an eyebrow, still without looking at him. “They won't fry us. Glockner will get me first, and you'll either die of that ulcer, or Cesar will insert some hemorrhoids for you. Does Arkansas even have the death penalty?”
Sam hissed out a wife-ish sigh and stood up. “No, man, neither of those things are going to happen because I'm going to go fucking dark side before then. And it's not gonna have anything to do with any demon.” He left, presumably to go sulk in his top bunk while Cesar was out roaming the yard.
Dean knew he was wrong, though. He was used to Sam's moodiness, the long days of silence followed by sudden bright bursts of inquisitive, helpful attempts to talk about feelings. The way his brother used verbal communication like a blunt weapon, withholding emotions to punish and talking to set things right, even though Dean - like their Dad before him - had made it clear that silence was blessed, and his yammering unwelcome, unless pointedly relevant. But recently, the patterns had fallen apart. Sam's words had fallen into strict sarcasm, unmollifying, resentful. Seven months of parading dead people could do that to you. Sam was losing it, a bit.
And Dean knew he was responsible, watching his brother teeter on the brink like that. It had everything to do with the demon, and it had everything to do with their being so efficiently, effectively neutered. Dean had already painted up a lockbox on the ceiling, and it was named Ego and Bad Luck.
On a Sunday morning two weeks later a guard came by when he was raking in smokes at a picnic table to tell him he had a visitor. Henricksen sat across the glass, all stiff white collar and aggravated eyebrows. He looked like shit. He stared at Dean for a long time before deigning to pick up the phone. Dean himself smirked, and mirrored the action.
“How the hell'd you do it, you cocky son of a bitch?” He looked like he hadn't slept since St. Louis.
Dean's own eyebrows rose. “Do what, Special Agent? Your wife, or your mother?”
“Shut it. You either tell me right now how you killed the poor suckers, all five of them, plus the three that happened before you showed up, without laying a finger on 'em, or I tell you exactly what I think.”
Dean shook his head, raised his hand in supplication. “Enlighten me.”
“I think you are one unlucky bastard. Barring God's own divine wrath, you are a walking carrier of massive heart failure. Barring that, you are innocent.”
“Ha.” Dean leaned back in his chair, by all appearances delighted and flattered. “You really think so?”
“You know what those State bitches are saying to each other right now?”
“What?”
“Asbestos. That's why they called off the renovations. They're saying that's what these people - all your little friends - died of. Motherfucking asbestos. They're calling in a professor from U of Texas to do some tests.” He spit out the last word like you might an insect crunched up in your salad.
Dean laughed, came forward to rest his forehead on his fingers, still laughing. “God almighty,” he sighed.
“So I know - I know - Winchester, because I'm not an idiot, that you and your baby brother are clean. And because you're clean on this you know what's going to happen? My case - my many, well-handled, perfectly legitimate cases - are going to get tossed to the ass end of things because everyone will be so embarrassed about accusing you boys of murder by asbestos.”
“That's really unfortunate, Victor,” said Dean, “My condolences.”
“It's unfortunate for you, boy, because you'll be the one rotting in C Block till your brother grows titties, while various charges get passed around and tax dollars get ate up by legal fees and you drain the system with your hearty Kansas appetites and inevitable STDs.”
Dean cleared his throat, angled a look at the other man. “What the fuck is your point, Henricksen?”
“My point, Winchester, is that I am getting you extradited to Missouri, and it would really help my case if you could make yourself dangerous for a little while. Beat up some thugs. Mouth off to a few guards. Hang out in solitary for a while.” Henricksen's empty hand folded and unfolded against the dirty countertop, picked at itself like a dog licking its crotch. The man was rattled. Still, he asked like it was a perfectly reasonable request.
“Uh, fuck yourself,” said Dean, and stood up.
The look of absolute panic on Henricksen's face stopped him - the other man lunging forward like he could grab Dean by his jumpsuit through the window and hold on for mercy and life. Surprised, Dean sat down again. Considered his words. “I'm not going to help you nail my brother and me. Obviously. So what are you actually asking for?”
“Things are getting grey,” said Henricksen, half to himself. His eyes flicked up again, and there was sweat on his face. “I need to clear them up, the law doesn't operate in shades of grey, or at least not the kind of law I do.”
“If you know these murder charges are bullshit, why are you still hanging on to St. Louis? You know as well as I do-”
“No, I don't know that.” Henricksen cut him off, sharp. “What I do know is this: I will get you out of this hell hole, and what happens after that, happens.”
Dean snorted. Looked at the man carefully. The white collar was clean, but the suit jacket was shiny with ironing, while the tie had wrinkles and even a few crumbs. Where was the cocky facial hair? Gone, just a shadow of a beard left. This man looked near as obsessed as a Winchester. He'd let them go free just to hunt them down again. He'd probably watch them rough up a guard and steal his cash and ID, just so he could nail them for cop-killing and identity theft later down the line. Or maybe not. Dean didn't know. But he wasn't in a position to question.
“I'll see you in St. Louis,” Dean stood, and left.
He didn't tell Sam, couldn't give him that hope just to take it away again. Couldn't bear to hear the harangue against trusting a neurotic bureaucrat like Henricksen. Thought Sam and Victor would probably have got along, if Jess hadn't burned up on the ceiling and the Stanford interview had gone smoothly.
He didn't have to mouth off to a guard, though, because Sam finally made good on his threats and went dark side on Cesar one night while screaming the name of a soon-to-be dead man in Richmond, Virginia. “Curtis Butler. Curtis Butler. CURTIS BUTLER. CURTIS BUTLER CURTIS BUTLER.” Cesar went to the infirmary, Sam went to solitary for a week. When he came back, he was quiet, and his eyes dipped and didn't rise. He apologized. Cesar didn't come back, even after he recovered, and Sam slept alone, and woke screaming other names. Neighbours on the block muttered complaints, but didn't say anything.
Dean kept dreaming that Sam's eyes were black, but they never were. Once he even muttered a blessing over the powdered OJ, watched Sam drink it down, and felt sick to his stomach.
He waited two months, then tracked down Henricksen's number, asked how it was going. Henricksen said, “What? Who is this? Who the fuck is calling?” and hung up.
Dean was resolved, though, and he picked a fight with one of Lucas' old buddies, spent a few nights in solitary himself. Nurse Glockner didn't visit. He wondered if the construction had somehow trapped her again, back in the old block. He didn't know. But an idea suggested itself to him.
When he got out, Sam had scabs down the sides of his face from tearing at himself during the night. He started to sob in the yard, where it was sunny and the concrete reflected warmth up at them. Dean, who hadn't touched anyone except to punch them in almost a year - and longer, really, because he could barely remember the last girl - hesitated, then sat Sammy down on a picnic table's bench, and sat on the tabletop as lookout himself. He put his hand in Sammy's hair and let the boy curve his face against his thigh, and glared out at anyone who even dared to glance sideways at them. Wife, my ass, Dean's look said. He's my damn brother.
What could he do? Henricksen was probably bust and his brother was losing his mind and soon they'd be arguing that same damn thing: there was nothing he hated more than Sam begging for that promise. He'd given it, he hadn't meant it, he'd never mean it. He didn't want to discuss it. There was one thing they could do something about, and even that was a maybe.
They pulled the same stunt as last time, except Sam let someone else get punished for the fight, which was easy enough once you understood the way the guards looked at things. Dean crawled through the vents and made it to the old block and looked at the empty isolation cells, and didn't feel her presence at all. He prowled from room to room, looking them through and shutting the heavy iron doors. Just blank rooms: no windows, no bars, no slots. Iron had some mystical properties, he knew - nothing like salt or silver, but ancient all the same. They used it to kill nymphs, the odd wood fairy turned feral.
He entered one room, salt at the ready, and she was there, in the corner, head bleeding and gluey eye staring at him. She hissed, stuttered forward until she was standing in front, in front, behind him. Dean whirled, the door clanged shut, and in the sudden, breathless black he heard Sam shouting through the door as her fingers seized into his chest and he felt his heart start shuddering, tearing itself apart.
He tossed the salt at her, and she flickered for a brief second, long enough for Sam to push open the door, grab Dean by the forearm, and pull them both out. He slammed the door shut, back against it, hoping. Dean gave him a look of annoyance, rubbing his arm sourly.
“What.” Sam said, “You wanted to be trapped in there with her for forever?”
“At least she'd be in there,” Dean said.
“At least you're a dumbass,” mocked Sam.
The door was silent. Dean bent to pour the salt shaker across the threshold, using up three of the five he'd brought in the process. “Just in case,” he said.
Sam looked up and down the empty corridor. He was grinning, looking a bit like himself despite the pastiness and slack frame. “You know. While we're here.” He gestured at the ancient, barred window at the end of the hall, and Dean picked up an abandoned length of rebar from the floor to use as a lever.
They didn't make it all the way out before they got caught. They were halfway up the fence, Dean having already thrown up his jacket to cover the razor wire. But like he'd predicted, the guards spent a good time yelling before they let out a warning shot. It was hard. Dean reminded himself of Henricksen, tried to think Hey, this is all part of the plan. So first he, and then Sam, who didn't understand at all, dropped back to the ground, to get manhandled and handcuffed and thoroughly chastised by the over-excited guards.
After that, Sam's visions got worse, coming in the daytime again, making him act half like a little boy, half like a psychopath. It got so they could probably have walked around holding each other's crotches and necking, and none of the thugs would've said anything. And it was Sam who was a hell of a lot scarier than Dean.
As it was, they mostly just kept to themselves. Sam, who refused to get into any more fights after their long, long stay in solitary, got a job in the library for 35 cents an hour. He trolleyed around books and magazines when everyone else was confined to their cells, and Dean would ask for porn every time he came by. Every time he came by, Sam would offer up War and Peace.
“It's really good.” He'd say, and from the brevity of the description, Dean kind of suspected that he hadn't read it himself.
“Dude, at least something in English, alright?”
“Dude, at least try to educate yourself.”
“Dude, I'd rather whack it to Cesar than think about dead Russian princesses.”
“It's not about-” Sam started to protest, and then his voice kind of cut out, and he looked down at his book stack. “Does Buddy want anything?”
“Porn?” said Buddy, from the top bunk.
The next day, Sam lost it on the kitchen staff and scalded a man's thighs and bits with boiling water, and then knocked three more out in quick succession over a tussle about the meat sauce. When the guards came he got a baton out of one's hands and broke the man's face, then he had the shit kicked out of him by the rest of them. Again, Dean thought he saw bottomless black, but there was no way to test it, because Sam was in the infirmary for five weeks. And it wasn't a possession anyway, they both knew it, it was something much deeper, much worse.
The next time they saw each other was in the paddywagon Henricksen had arranged for. Dean looked at his brother as he got folded and locked into the bench opposite him, and pretty much started to cry, except for the fact that he was too fucking nervous to do something so useless. Sam didn't have bruises so much as stained scars in the hollows of his face, and he moved like he'd been playing tag with werewolves for the past week. Mostly he looked like he was missing a hunk of himself.
Dean smiled weakly. Sam did the same. Dean already had his handcuffs' lock cracked open as the van merged up onto the interstate. He reached down for his ankle shackles, but paused, and reached over and touched Sam's bound hands instead, then took them in his own. It was safe to do so, he knew it, Sam could barely even pull away, much less go berserk.
“Hey,” Dean told him, “We got options, now.”
“Yeah? What're those?” said Sam, he cocked his eyebrows at him. “Go crazy in prison, kill criminals; go crazy outside, kill innocent people. ”
“Drive your brother crazy; get killed yourself.” It wasn't a good joke, Dean felt the weight of his promise fall down on him like so many tons of iron. He took off Sam's handcuffs, they both turned to their shackles.
“Alright,” said Dean, straightening. “First things first: start screaming. I know you're good at it. Scream at those bastards up there until they come back here and let us out like the dumbasses they are.”
Sam did, and the guards pulled over and came back, one with a baton, the other with a sidearm, and the Winchester boys locked them both up in their skivvies, draped them in orange. Then they took up position in the cab, Dean re-starting the engine and adjusting his new uniform at the same time, and pulled back onto the highway in a peal of dry, rising dirt. Fourteen months to the day after Deacon died, they were back on the road.